The invention relates to storage and transport containers for elongate articles and has particular though not exclusive application to the storage and transport of ammunition of the size and kind used in military tanks. Each shell of such ammunition may for example be in the region of fourteen centimeters in diameter, ninety centimeters in length and weigh twenty kilograms. One method previously used of storing and transporting such ammunition was to contain each separate shell in an hermetically sealed container, provide a plurality of tubes in a steel box and slide each shell into a respective one of the tubes, the box then being mounted on a pallet for handling by forklift trucks and loading into a logistics vehicle for transportation to the site at which a tank was to be armed, the individual shells then being extracted in their containers from the tubes, stripped of their containers and loaded into the tank. The containers were liable to damage such that they could frequently not be reused and there was considerable wasted space in the box formed by dead space between the tubes which could not nestle closely together.
Where a container is to be used to store articles for a considerable period, for example fifteen years, it is frequently important that it be hermetically sealed to prevent deterioration of the articles due to atmospheric corrosion. Hermetically sealing a container with a large opening, for example one and one-half meters square in a manner such that the container can be transported without breaking the seal, presents considerable problems.